Tag Archives: Bill Cosby

Hollywood Sexual Predator

Hollywood Sexual Predator

Wikipedia defines a sexual predator as: “A sexualpredator is a person seen as obtaining or trying to obtain sexual contact with another person in a metaphorically “predatory” or abusive manner.”

The world is full of deviant people who prey on innocent, unwilling, and unknowing victims. In a city the size of Los Angeles, your chances of being preyed on increases exponentially as—the larger the population—the greater the pool of sexual predators. On top of that, Los Angeles is also the home to Hollywood, which tends to attract whackos with all sorts of deviant personalities. Hollywood is the epi-center of the celebrity-drenched ‘Celebrities are Gods’ culture. Ironically, when one of Hollywood’s elite is exposed for their deviant behavior – their public persona is often so ‘believed’ that they sometimes get away with their crime.

I almost choked on my own saliva when I saw Gloria Allred on TV the other day stating that there had been a mistrial in the Bill Cosby case. I sat their stupefied, wondering how any jury could not convict a man that testified under oath that he had given women drugs to get them to have sex with him, not to mention the titanic list of witness that had come forward claiming sexual assault. It was an injustice to women everywhere, and a shocking example of the power of celebrity, and people’s perceptions of the false characters they portray. Well, at least that is how I saw it. I love Gloria Allred; she is right up there with Oprah, Ellen DeGeneres and Barbara Walters: amazing women, who empower change for the better, all of them.

All I can say is: Gloria, I hope you get him in round two.

As I have been watching the Bill Cosby drama over the last several months on the news, it reminded me of my own narrow escape with a sexual predator….

Sexual Predator Flash back to 16 years ago….

I had been living in Los Angeles for just over a year. One warm summer night, my friend and I were sitting at one of Beverly Hills high-end restaurants, having a bite and a glass of wine at the bar. About halfway through our plates of pasta, a handsome and distinguished gentleman came up behind us and said, “James has just spotted the two prettiest girls in the room.” James, who kept referring to himself in the 3rd person, continued to regale us with his banter. “James drives a Ferrari, James is rich, James likes to spoil his ladies, James, James, James…”

I found James a bit odd, and very quirky, and I wondered if his 3rd person persona was his attempt at standing out from the other men who were also circling around us at the bar? Somehow ‘James’ managed to occupy our air space for the next 45 minutes, as he never allowed us to really escape his obnoxious pontificating; but, he did insist on paying our bill before we left. ‘James’ also informed us about a big party ‘James’ was having at his McMansion for the upcoming 4th of July holiday and ‘James’ asked for our numbers before we left so ‘James’ could invite us. When my friend wrote down—what I assumed to be— her number next to her name on his note pad, I followed suit. My friend had lived in Los Angeles her entire life, so I often deferred to her on ‘social-scene-etiquette’ when I was unsure as to how to proceed.

The minute we got in the cab to leave, my friend said: “Could you believe that weirdo? Well, at least he paid our bill after hogging up most of our night with his annoying ‘James’ chatter.” I remember saying to her, “but you gave him your number.” To which she replied, “I gave him the number to Rite Aid, I wouldn’t give a weirdo like that my real number. OMG… did you?” And, I remember looking at her, shrugging my shoulders, and explaining how I had followed her, what I assumed to be, ‘wise lead.’

The next day, I saw a number I didn’t recognize on my cell phone, and I let it go to straight to voicemail. And… it was James who left me the following message:

“James liked meeting Janell, and James would like to invite Janell to come up to James’ home for dinner. James will even send someone to pick Janell up.”

Somehow, the 3rd person speak was even creepier on a voice message than it had been in person. I called my friend wondering how to proceed, and she said: “Janell, you aren’t in Canada anymore; you can’t trust everyone you meet. You are going to end up dead if you do. He asked you up to his house, and offered to have you picked up… right, just so you can be captive and have no idea where you are, the guy’s a whacko. You need to change your phone number, ASAP!”

Well… I didn’t change my number, but I didn’t respond; and thankfully I never heard from him again.

UNTIL…

Ten Years Later a Sexual Predator is unveiled…

I was at work, and a call came in from a number that I didn’t recognize. When I listened to the message it was from a Detective Jarvis of the LAPD asking me to call him back about an ongoing case. I almost had a heart attack at work. I had no idea what it could be about.

I nervously called, and when Detective Jarvis answered the phone, he explained that he was the lead detective on a case. He said he was trying to build a case against a high-profile man in Los Angeles who had drugged multiple women, then taped himself having sex with them once they were knocked out cold. The detective had found my name and number in a note pad that the perpetrator had kept, and he was going through the note pad calling each girl to see if she was perhaps one of the girls on the tapes that they had found. They were trying to identify the other victims.

I sat there in shock; I had no idea what the detective was talking about. I didn’t think I had been sexually assaulted, I mean, shit, I would remember that, wouldn’t I? He started to describe the man, and I was drawing a blank. But, then he said, “And he refers to himself in the 3rd person.” All of a sudden, the memory of ‘James’ came flooding back to me faster than a rapid in a river. And, I remembered the whole incident and meeting him and… everything.

The Detective went on to tell me that they had only just apprehended him. One of his victims had temporarily regained consciousness when he was raping her, and she had enough of a memory to piece together where she had been and who she had been with. When they arrested him, they found multiple tapes of him having sex with other drugged up victims.

I told Detective Jarvis that I was truly lucky. I had not taken James up on his offer, and I never went up to his home. He was relieved to hear that, as he said the notes that James had written about me next to my name and number, made him think that perhaps I was indeed one of his victims.

So, I asked Detective Jarvis what the comments were that James had noted about me, and he said: new to LA, trusting.

Wow, James had scoped me out pretty good, and at that time, I really was too trusting. But, I was lucky; I had been saved from the evil clutches of a sexual predator. His lure of money, or his seemingly ‘doting attention’, did not hold any influence over me. And, thankfully I had a smart girlfriend who also was watching my back.

So, the moral of this Hollywood Sexual Predator story is:

A Sexual Predator can come in all shapes and sizes, and don’t forget that a Sexual Predator can be: wealthy, educated, handsome or famous. Sexual Predators prey on you, so they use all of their strengths, charms, and power to lure you in until you are one of their defenseless victims.

Famous people are just as fucked or MORE FUCKED than the average Joe; never confuse the ‘fabricated-fictitious-figures’ they portray – and think for a second that THAT is who they are.

And remember… strangers are strangers, building trust takes time. Value yourself and your safety before you trust any random person you meet. You never know who you might meet. Although I thought James was creepy, I never imagined that he would be a deviant, sick, SEXUAL PREDATOR!

Creepy Handshake Dude

Creepy Handshake Dude

Creepy Handshake, have you ever gotten one? Please don’t confuse a creepy handshake with a sweaty palm handshake, or a limpy-wimpy handshake, or a held-too-long handshake; a creepy handshake is in a league all of its own. What is a creepy handshake? Let me set the stage a little…..

Last week, I attended a fabulous Hollywood party at a mansion in Beverly Hills. The weather was beautiful and my Girlfriend (who I went to the party with) and I were having fun, sipping champagne and daintily munching on the bite-size hors d’oeurves that the catering staff kept tempting us with; a perfect end to another beautiful day in sunny Los Angeles.

As we wandered around, mixing and mingling with the various peeps in attendance, my Girlfriend suddenly noticed that the world famous LA BILLIONAIRE was present, and she made a beeline to go meet him, with me following behind. She made her way up to him, which was not entirely easy, as he was flanked by his entourage of minions that he brought along to make sure that no one would get near him – which if you really think about it, is an odd dichotomy in and of itself. I mean, why go to a party if you are going to isolate yourself from everyone? Anyway, her blonde-sexy-self must have made an impression on LA BILLIONAIRE, as the waves of minions parted giving her just enough room to sidle up against him and introduce herself.

I stood behind her, sipping my champagne, and after he refused to get a picture with her, she turned around and said, “Oh, and this is my friend Janell”. LA BILLIONAIRE looked me dead in the eyes, giving me that look – that come hither ‘I want to do you look’ – and said, “We have met before, haven’t we?” I shook my head and said “No”, but then it dawned on me that two years ago I had met him at a charity golf event, and said, “Well, actually I did meet you at a charity golf event a couple of years ago.”

As he held his stare directly at me, I reached out my hand to shake his hand, and….he did it. He gave me the creepy handshake. As the palm of his hand touched my palm, and while his eyes were fixated into my eyes, his middle finger started to quickly vibrate back and forth on the palm of my hand.

He, he, he …FINGERED the palm of my hand! He molested my hand!

And the whole time while he was fingering the palm of my hand, he was giving me that look; that look like he would like to finger other parts of my body. You know the look, the look like he would like to put his manly bits into various orifices of my girlie bits. And, it didn’t turn me on. It didn’t make me want to ‘do it’, or ‘do him’, or ‘do anything’ with LA BILIONAIRE. It did, however, make me flee to the nearest restroom to thoroughly wash my hands, as WHO KNOWS WHERE HIS FINGER HAD BEEN?

I am sorry, but getting the creepy handshake isn’t a turn-on. It is, as its name implies (Okay, so the name I gave it!) – Creepy. The worst part of this creepy LA BILLIONAIRE handshake experience, was that it brought back a memory that I had repressed; a somewhat traumatic repressed memory. You see, LA BILLIONARE wasn’t the first to finger my sweet palm.

FLASHBACK TO……

Fifteen years ago, when I was leaving the Beverly Hilton with my then boyfriend – my six foot six, husky, mobster-looking boyfriend – a FAMOUS POLITICIAN passed us by as we exited the elevator. Ex-boyfriend – who had a boisterous and gregarious personality – stopped FAMOUS POLITICIAN, introduced himself and started to engage in a conversation with him. FAMOUS POLITICIAN was very polite, and gave my ex-boyfriend a minute or so of his time as I stood silently beside him, somewhat gobsmacked that my ex-boyfriend had the courage to pursue a conversation with FAMOUS POLITIAN, while at the same time mesmerized by being in FAMOUS POLITICIAN’s presence.

As FAMOUS POLITICIAN excused himself, in order to disengage from this unexpected verbal exchange, he looked at me and stuck out his hand to introduce himself to me as well. I felt so honored that FAMOUS POLITICIAN wanted to meet me, and as he looked intently into my eyes, and as I extended my hand to shake his, FAMOUS POLITIAN slide in the creepy handshake move, and fingered my palm while telling me how nice it was to meet me.

I was a bit traumatized by the handshake, and sat silently listening to ex-boyfriend talk about what a great guy FAMOUS POLITICIAN was as we drove away from the Beverly Hilton. A great guy, until I told ex-boyfriend what FAMOUS POLITICIAN had done. And then, I spent the rest of the night trying to keep ex-boyfriend from going back to the Hilton to track down FAMOUS POLITICIAN and rip his head off.

So the night after I received my creepy handshake number 2, I was headed to an art gallery opening with a different girlfriend, crammed into the back seat of her Porsche 911 as her Guy Friend –who is 6 foot 4, and extremely handsome – won the place in the passenger’s seat for the night, as his legs were definitely longer than mine. From the back seat, I started to tell them about my escapades of the night prior, and how LA BILLIONAIRE had slipped in the creepy handshake move.

To my surprise, my Girlfriend had never experienced a creepy handshake in her life. For some reason I thought this must be a ‘male thing to do’, and assumed every girl had experienced this cheesy move at some point. Suddenly, I was glad that I was trapped in the back seat, as I felt embarrassed for telling my story, feeling like I was a magnet for loser-cheeseball-men. Then, Guy Friend came to my rescue, when he piped up from his comfy position in the front seat and said that, he too, had experienced the creepy handshake.

He went on to tell us that a few years back, when he was promoting a club, a club patron came up to him, and engaged in conversation with him and slid in the creepy handshake move. Guy Friend assumed that the guy must have been Gay, and that was his way of hitting on him to see if he might be interested in playing ball for a different team, so to speak.

He reaffirmed to my friend that the creepy handshake move was creepy, disturbing, and something that he had put out of his memory until I decided to regale everyone on the way to the gallery with my tales of woe from the previous night. He said that the creepy handshake move was so disturbing to him, that he had filed it in that ‘never to be thought of again’ file in his brain. A file that had been permanently shut until my big mouth started to make conversation from my crammed position in the back seat of a Porsche.

We continued the dialogue after the gallery opening while wolfing down our tacos at El Coyote, and we all came to the same conclusion: creepy handshakes come from creepy people, and it doesn’t matter how much money one makes, or one’s position in society, or one’s sexual preferences – any unwanted sexual overtures are UNWANTED, and disturbing to the recipient.

So the moral of the story is:

Never assume because someone is rich or famous that you are free from unwanted sexual advances – on the contrary, their position most likely makes them feel untouchable (Hello Bill Cosby!).

For all the people out there who think the creepy handshake move is a turn- on, news flash – it is a turn-off!

And, like the Girl Scouts motto states to ‘Always be Prepared’ – so make sure to have a travel size of antibacterial gel just in case your palm gets slimed, because remember – you never know where that finger has been!